Diana Watch (on tour)

Usually she just lies there in the faecal position. Today Martyn is in Kent. In the front line, so to speak. It’s like war reporting this. Let’s get it out of the way at the beginning because I know that it has become a little dull to hear me go on and on about Israel, it has been reflected in the readership numbers, but at the time of typing there is talk of a ceasefire. Much to the relief of the UN, as well as the Palestinians, who have had 2 schools and their headquarters in Gaza bombed, possibly with white phosphorus bombs, which are illegal. My point is this, what has Israel achieved? They claim that their goals for a ceasefire have been met but Hamas are still firing rockets at them, so that doesn’t seem to be one of them. Is it suspicious that they started talking about a ceasefire on the day that George W Bush left the White House? The timing is also significant in Israel because they have an election coming up. You don’t want to go into an election actually at war but going into it just after a war that you can claim you have won and see how seriously we take National Security, the only thing to be heard saying this season for any serious politician, does give you a reasonable platform. To claim that the war was merely electioneering would be a little cynical but hey….

It seems that no one listens to me. This will not come as a surprise to anyone but me. I turned on my television this week to see Iggy Pop advertising insurance. And after my “why do famous people do adverts” rant, oh how the mighty have fallen and while we are at it, The Jesus and Mary Chain and The Charlatans seem to have licensed their music for ads. It makes me sad but I suppose you have to make money. One other point, on the ghastly “Injury lawyers 4 U” adverts it is claimed that “they are real lawyers”. Good, I’m glad to hear it, although it is sort of what I would expect from a company of lawyers, even if they do use text speak in their company name. Oh and is that a vulture that appears over their name at the end of the ad? I don’t suppose for a minute that they have that level of self awareness but it would be nice.

Environment news now and I think we should start with a positive story from India. Delhi has banned the plastic bag and they’ve really gone for it as well, no silly little punishment for them, oh no, up to 5 years in jail. One of the reasons that they have banned them is because discarded bags were blocking the drains and this is remarkable unhelpful in a monsoon. They are not the first to ban them though; Rwanda, Bhutan and Bangladesh are also in on the act. So if some of the worlds poorest countries can do it, take this bold step into a plastic free future, why can’t we? Well the reason is Gordon Brown. And man who really doesn’t understand. This week has seen one of more odd announcements from this government, one that will haunt them until they are no longer in charge. We shall have a third runway at Heathrow. Why? Do we really need it? It is estimated that it will only generate £42 million a year which really isn’t that much. I have heard at least 2 government spokesmen saying that the 3rd runway will help us be more competitive on the other side of the recession and at least 1 said that it will help Britain’s (how will it help Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?) infrastructure post-recession. Now the likelihood is that they won’t cut the first sod until 2012 and it won’t be finished until, at the earliest, 2020! How long do they think the recession is going to last?
Greenpeace is doing its bit in order to help hold things up. It has purchased a small piece of land within the area that will be needed for the expansion and is currently dividing the ownership up too as many people as possible. At the moment it is owned by about 12000 people and Greenpeace are going to start offering parts to foreign people in an attempt to slow down the compulsory purchase order process even more.
What the government has succeeded in doing is providing it critics with a really big, oily stick with which they can hit it every time they try and do something meaningful for the environment. Whatever suggestions they make we can shout back “Heathrow”. They have managed to shoot themselves in the foot so badly that now the Tories look like the environmentally friendly party. There should be a joke about recycled ideas here but I can’t be bothered. They took the opportunity that was presented to them and grasped it with a big tree hug and proudly announced their own plan to save the planet, some of which was very good, tidal power, an “intelligent” power grid and micro-generation (see I told you it was the way forward) but some of it was utter pish. Plugs all round London to recharge electric cars despite the fact that electric cars are rubbish and take hours to charge, for instance. Hydrogen fuel cells are the future anyway as you can fill them up like a petrol car. The government messed so badly that David Cameron could vote against getting rid of old style tungsten bulbs (as he did this week) and still look like the hippy. A quick fact for you, 14% of all the electricity generated in this country goes on lighting. Think of the power that could be saved of we all switched to low energy light bulbs? Even the Daily Mail agrees with that.

Let’s do some awards,

The Award For Fantastic Bit of Flying of the Week,

This goes to Chesley Sullenberger who managed to not hit anything in New York after taking off from LaGuardia Airport, getting hit by a flock of Geese, losing both engines and then somehow managing to land safely on the Hudson River. Take off to landing took 7 minutes. Lets be honest, we take our pilots for granted but when it comes down to it, they do a remarkable job.

The Award For Really Embarrassing Thing of the Week,

There really is no competition for this week; it really has to go to Kate Winslet and her awful, awful acceptance speech at the Golden Globes when she got her gong for being best at pretending to be someone else.



The Award For Funniest Art Instillation That Embarrassed A Government of the Week,

“And so we are going to be the EU presidential country for 6 months, how should we celebrate such a thing?” “I know, sculpture!” Unveiled this week was a sculpture to challenge European stereotypes. It was suppose to be by 27 different artists doing a bit about their own country, it turns out, however, that it was all done by one artist and a couple of his mates and some countries have found his jokes a tiny bit offensive. Bulgaria was portrayed as a toilet; Denmark was made out of Lego and, if viewed from a certain angle, looked a bit like one of the cartoons of Mohammad that pissed so many people. My favourite part of the work was the UK, which wasn’t there. See what they’ve done there? Britain is not really in Europe, see?

The Award for Fuss Over Nothing of the Week,

This goes to everyone who made a fuss about Baroness Whatsit saying that she could see “the green shots of recovery”. George Osborne claimed that she should apologise for the comment as she was insensitive and out of touch. A spectacular fuss was made in the press about it as well, claiming that it was a gaffe but really what it was was an answer to a direct question about the credit markets and her reply was in reference to a specific company getting a loan. Taken out of context it could be a little wrong but you could consider other business results out in the last weeks. Sales figures for Sainburys, HMV, Tesco, Aldi, Carphone Warehouse and the Smart Car are all up. Consumer confidence survey was up and the website Rightmoves.com says that numbers registering on the site looking for a new home had doubled on this time last year. Green shoots there might be.

Ok that will do for this week, hope you all have fun. Oh and listen to the new single by Britney Spears and Lily Allen because they are both fantastic. I know I should be telling you about obscure indie nonsense but pop music it good for you, sometimes anyway. To redress the balance may I recommend to you albums by The Acorn and Woodpigeon cos they are great too.

Diana Watch

On the same day that I was asked to join Yes I got a call from David Bowie asking me to formThe Spiders from Mars with Mick Ronson. I have spent most of this weekend decorating my hall. Have I ever expressed to you how much I hate decorating? I really hate decorating. Well, I hate the painting of the walls, glossing is alright. A rather surprising thing has happened whilst doing the decorating though, I have put up a new coat rack/shelving thing and nothing has gone wrong. Not a thing. Putting it together was easy, all the parts were present, the drilling of holes in my wall was no problem, wall plugs slid in, screws went in, tightened up nicely and the unit it’s self fitted perfectly. This is very odd indeed. I don’t have the greatest history with DIY and shelf putting up more significantly, just ask significant other about her cherished glassware that was in our dining room, but this all seems to have gone scarily well. It won’t last. At least I can now do karate now after all that painting.
There hasn’t been a great deal of news this week due to the fact that no one has been watching the news because there have been many showings of Wallace and Gromit on the BBC (if news is reported and no one is watching, has it happened?) but what there has been has mostly been about Gaza and the destruction there of. Israel is like a badly behaved child. Since they were born they have been behaving badly, not playing well with other children in the neighbourhood, but their parents (America) has turned a bit of a blind eye. There has been the odd telling off and various empty threats to take the toys away but still they have been allowed to play with their cowboy outfit, the parent is secretly proud of the strong, independent child that they have bought up, every so often defending its behaviour with the “difficult/traumatic birth and childhood” excuse. What Israel needs is some sort of UN sanctioned Super Nanny to make it sit on the international naughty step for a while whilst it considers what it has done and why it might upset the other children to have their Lego knocked down. The Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, has said that Israel’s bombing of Gaza will lead to the radicalization of Palestinians against Israel yet when asked the same question about us bombing Iraq he denied that this phenomenon would take place, how odd.

Your Government wants to know what you are doing. They really, really want to know what you are doing. So much so that they have decided that asking you might end with you standing with your hands behind your back, sulkily looking at your feet, rubbing out an imaginary cigarette with one foot and mumbling under your breath “nothing”, and this won’t tell them what they won’t to know, so they are bring forward legislation that will enable them to track every phone call you make and email you send and website you visit. That won’t know the content but they will know who you are contacting. Oh and a private company is probably going to run it. Oh where to start. I don’t want the Government to know how many times I phone my mother or not in my case. Well, finding out how many times I’ve phoned my mum after a private company has left the information has been left in a kebab shop. There is also the point that if they don’t know the content of the message then what’s the point? Some one I know might be a terrorist, it could happen, my money is on my friend Kate, you know, best Christmas card of the year Kate, happy family life, pretty children, suspicious I think you’ll agree, and I could message them a lot simply because they are my friend and I could be caught up in their web of intrigue and terror because the content of my messages is not known, not that that is a reason for the Government to know everything. Why is the argument always “if you are innocent you have nothing to fear”? It is a silly argument. You do have something to fear. You have to worry about someone knowing everything about you, as it says on my shopping bag “anonymity is not a crime”.

Why do staggeringly wealthy people do adverts? Why does George Clooney advertise some piss poor coffee thing for Nescafe? Why do Bruce Willis and Alice Cooper appear in the new Norwich Union advert? And why, oh god why, does Ewan McGregor do that awful “fragrance for men” nonsense? Pierce Brosnan is worth it I’m told. Have you not got enough money? No, really, be honest, the only reason you can be sullying yourself to do them is for the money. You don’t believe the nonsense you are being told to say any more then I do. It has to be for the money but you are fantastically, don’t have to work ever again and live really well, wealthy. Why are you doing it? Why are you selling your souls and hawking crap on the rest of us? It’s because you are getting paid isn’t it? Despite the fact that you don’t need it you will do almost anything for more money. You disgust me.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I’m a little bile filled this week and I’m not sure why. It may be the result of the, not quite finished, decorating. Wax on, wax off. Just a couple of other things and I’ll leave you alone. It must be like answering the door and some bloke just starts shouting at you about things you don’t care that much about. A website was set up for worriers, by a worrier, and held a survey about worrying and guesses what? It found that the people on the worrying website (that’s a website about worrying, not one containing intimate pictures of Tony Blair with a Tonka toy) were worriers. Not a great surprise really but what was a surprise was to turn on BBC news and have some dimwit shouting “it’s official, we are a nation of worriers,” and then quoting from this survey as if it had something important to say or was carried out in some way that would give us some statistically significant results. Some crappy website survey is not science and it most certainly is not news.

The Awards for the week,

The Award for Oddest Music Show on the Radio of the Week,

This goes to Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone on BBC 6Music, Sunday evenings 17.30-20.00. Where else would you hear recordings of KPM all-stars playing the theme from Countdown, Channel 4 news and the Dave Allen show recorded live at the Jazz Café?

The Award for Really Odd and Slightly Sinister Medical Research of the Week,

This goes to Doctors at the HaEmek Medical Centre, Israel, who are going to carry out clinical trials to test the value of medical clowns for patients who are about to have cataract surgery. This will involve 100 patients and half of them will be half scared to death by, sorry, exposed to a clown before their operation to assess the effect on blood pressure and pulse rate of patients undergoing surgery under local anaesthesia. I would imagine that the pulse and BP of those who have to suffer the clown torture will be sky high or am I missing the point. Another week, another story from the BMJ.

A quick mention of the new Dr Who and no real surprise to find out that it wasn’t me. It was, however, slightly funny looking Matt Smith and, whilst I’m not familiar with his work, I’m sure he will be fantastic; he has a slightly sinister look about him. I’m told that he is not as pretty as Mr Tennant, information supplied by significant other there. Decided for yourselves. Ah well, better luck next time for me then.



Happy New Year everyone xx