This weekend is Dorchester’s Warm Festival. It mostly consists of bands playing on the Bandstand in the BoroughGardens and us watching them with ale, although I haven’t gone yet as it is pissing it down here.
What I like out this, apart from the ale, is the unassuming, not-expecting-much name of the event. The Warm Festival. We can’t promise you heat or sunshine but it will probably be warm. Ish.
Umm, not much has happened this week to be honest; A-levels came out and were instantly belittled throughout the media.
Many have pointed out that the visual media, whether that be print or television, seem to think that only nubile young ladies have taken A-levels or at least that is the impression that they give with the photographs that they choose to illustrate their stories with. Here is a link to the Sexy A-levels photo stream.
It was the last episode of this series of That Mitchell and Webb Look on Tuesday and, after they had covered the Moon Landing conspiracy theories pretty comprehensively, tuned their attention to Diana Death conspiracy ideas with amusing results,
The Award for Over-reaction of the Week
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water a massive crocodile turns up in the English Channel. Swimming in the sea in and around Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, was suspended on Friday when people claimed that they had seen a massive beast paddling around.
People ran screaming from the water, ok I might be making that bit up, whilst an investigation was carried out. Where was this enormous prehistoric beast? Did it even exist? Well no, it turns out it was a log.
The Award for Pot Calling The Kettle Black of the Week,
Facebook (and other sites) this week has faced criticism this week over the amount of information it collects about its users and the amount of private data that users upload.
Eric Schmidt said that privacy is dying and that when users grow up they may consider changing their names in order to get away from the trail of embarrassing information that their younger selves posted on-line.
That Eric Schmitt by the way is the same Eric Schmitt who is the head of Google. You know Google, that search engine that has spread it wings and now offers all sorts of services for free. How are they for free you may ask? Well, they sell advertising space on their sites but they also sell all the information that they gather on you when you are using the services that they so kindly provide for you. Which is nice.
That is it for today, have a lovely week and if you enjoy the podcast do feel free to leave a review on Itunes or podbean and tell you friends about it, thank you.
Both teams have to play on the same surface, stop moaning. You lost because the other side scored more goals than you not because the grass hated you.
Martyn Norris
Can you guess which paper has had Princess Diana on the front this week? Of course you can, now you have GCSE Media studies, it’s the Sunday Express,
I'm not going to take up too much off your time this week because I have got some homework for you.
Now I'm not saying that you have to read them all the way though because they are really, really dull but here are links to the main parties (and UKIP's) manifestos
There doesn’t seem to be a manifesto for this election on their website but on past performances I think that we can safely assume that it would basically be “Go home Darkies” and would use the word Indigenous a lot without ever spelling out what that means.
The SNP
I can't find a manifesto on their website but they claim to have one. It may possibly be this though,
Thank you to the BBC for providing this list of all the parties standing and links to information about them.
OK, that is hard work I know so let's just get on with the awards,
The Award for the World's Most Self Destructive Snack,
Are you scared of American Imperialism? Worried that the rise of the Religious Right in the US threatens rationalism in that country? Don't understand the appeal of Glee? If I was you I wouldn't worry too much because they will all be dead soon.
The bread of this bacon and cheese sandwich has been replaced with deep-fried breaded/battered chicken burgery things.
If a heart attack could be represented as a food stuff, this is what it would look like.
The Award Naked Opportunism of the Week,
This goes to both the Conservatives and the Lib Dems.
The Government sent out a leaflet saying that the excellent 2 week guarantee for woman with suspected breast cancer to see a specialist was under threat for Tory plans.
These leaflets were delivered to thousands of homes and, naturally, some of the people who got one had had breast cancer or know someone who has (a bit like how cold reading works). Because people are stupid and self-centred they assumed that the leaflets were targeted at them and have complained about it.
They were not targeted at anyone, it was just a statistical certainty that this would happen but that didn't stop both the parties weighing in.
David Cameron called for an apology and called the tactic “sick” despite the fact that it wasn't a “tactic”. Even the mighty Vince Cable wasn't above lowering himself to getting involved and said there needed to be an investigation to see if there had been any abuse of data protection laws. No there doesn't.
The Award for Having a Dig at a Fellow Sportsman of the Week,
Golfist Phil Mickelson won the US masters on Sunday. This competition was the much written about return of serial philanderer Tiger Woods to professional golf and the expectation was very high. It blanketed out pretty much everything else in the coverage but he did not win.
On winning one of the worlds more pointless sports Mr Mickelson dedicated it to his wife.
The Award for Self Important Self Appointed Busy Body of the Week,
Jim Gamble is the Director of Child Exploitation and Online Protection (Ceop). He has decided, with the help of the Daily Mail, that Facebook is the devil.
Despite the fact that there is no proof that his idea about having a “panic button” on the social networking site will make any difference to the safety of children using it, he still manages to get himself on the various news programmes and into newspapers to promote himself, sorry, his idea.
The Award for Having the Worst PR Department in all of the Known World,
More good work by the people who work for the Catholic Church this week (I'm getting a little bored of this now. 4th week in a row that I have to mention child rapists and those that covered up for them).
They have blamed the Devil, they have blamed the Press and now they blame..... The Gays. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Pope's number 2, has said that Homosexuality was to blame for most of the “problems” that the Church has been having with continually employing child rapists and not the whole celibacy thing.
Whilst in Chile he said “Many psychologists and psychiatrists have demonstrated that there is no relationship between celibacy and paedophilia. But many others have demonstrated, I have been told recently, that there is a relationship between homosexuality and paedophilia. That is true. That is the problem.” Oh FFS. What century are you living in? Oh yes, I remember, sometime in the 18th.
I understand why they are trying this Blame Others approach. They are attempting to show the faithful that it is the things that the Church preach against that are the problem in a kind of “See, we told you so” sort of way, but it will not wash with the rest of us.
Don’t expect any change in their policy any time soon though as the Church has only just forgiven John Lennon for his “bigger than Jesus” thing in 1966.
Oh, I supposed I ought to mention a bit of news.
Did you watch the Election Debate? OK, it was a bit dull and they had all “met” far too many people (David Cameron also claimed to have met a black man but I think that that is unlikely) but it does seem to have gone really rather well for Nick Clegg.
I’m not going to criticize their performances to much though because it was the first ever debate and no one really knew what they where doing. Clearly they had watched the U.S. debates and had noted the tendency to use a heart warming or point making anecdote. Unfortunately they all went over the top and answered almost ever question with a little folksy story. Now all they have to do is practise winking to camera and saying “Y’all”.
The other problem was the moderator. Alistair Stewart was rubbish. He barely gave them time to answer or rebut and bellowed over the top of them. I’m not sure if Tory loving Adam Boulton on Sky News will be any better though.
Some planes are unable to fly because of a massive cloud of volcanic ash covering most of Northern Europe.
Whilst most of the papers were concentrating on the effects on travellers and trade, both the Mail and Express decided that the cloud, which is mostly at 25,000ft, will kill you.
So if you are stuck somewhere and can't get home I do feel a bit sorry for you but to all of those moaning and scare-mongering in the press about food shortages can fuck right off. So what we don't have any asparagus imported from Egypt or lettuce from somewhere in Africa? How about buying British and seasonal? You may remember what food is supposed to taste like and maybe those countries can grow some food for themselves.
“But I’ve got a business meeting to go to!” yeah, will I have Skype and can talk to people all over the world, on video, for free. Give it a try, you might like it rather than selfishly flying round the world for no good reason.
Oh and I am loving the stories from people who live around airports and can't believe their luck with all the peace and quiet that they are having this weekend.
Please stop moaning, no one has or will die.
Do you think that your job is dangerous?
Have a good week and enjoy the sunny weather (as long as it carries on obviously, it's not like you can fly to somewhere sunnier.)
